When it comes to home schooling, your role as the teacher is of utmost importance. You naturally are a good teacher for your kids so adapting to this role as home school teacher should be a natural gravitation. Your job is to educate your child on the subjects that they need to learn, all while being there as a parent to help and support your kids.

To keep your child stimulated in the activities of home schooling, you should teach your child in a way that interests him. This is where your role as parent comes in as you should know your child’s likes and dislikes. Your patience with your child will have to be at a high level especially if they’re at a young age, as you will have to give them time to learn and adapt to the materials taught to them.

If you ever feel like your teaching skills as a parent aren’t up to par, then you should know that there are a ton of helpful home schooling resources readily available to you. You should use these home schooling guides to improve your skills as a teacher all while educating your child at the same time.

There packages, forums, libraries, and even virtual schools that can assist you with your home schooling endeavors. If you’re a beginning home school teacher, you should take advantage of all of this helpful free information right now. There are also software available to track your child’s progress and that will help to organize your lesson plans also.

Local support groups can be of immense help also. You will find other home school teachers who have a vast amount of experience and education that will sure to benefit you also. Once you’ve gotten the hang of things and have used all of the helpful free advice, then you will find that your home schooling jobs are streamlined and simple.

One thing that you do want to avoid however when home schooling is not to get tired of doing it. This is called “home school burnout” and it happens to a lot of home school teachers. This can occur for a number of reasons such as illness, an addition of a new family member, more responsibility, or the adapting change in the home schooling curriculum.

If you see that you cry for any reason or are lacking patience, then you may have this disorder. If you are burnt out about home school, the first thing you need to know is that it can be reversed. You want to lower your expectations and look for other things to try if something isn’t working the way you want it to.

Whenever tension arises, take a break. You may need to check your style teaching and revamp them to suit your style. You should never schedule a lot of activities for your child just to help them get out and socialize. Having a depressed parent and a complaining kid is a bad mixture for home schooling.

You want to get as much support from your spouse as possible to try and help out with the situation. You may want to consider having your spouse check your child’s homework as this will alleviate some of the responsibility that you have to endure.

These tips will help to end your home schooling burnout and get your on the right track to teaching your child while being happy at the same time. Good luck with your home school teachings.

All children need a good education as they are growing up. This is just a known fact. What isn’t so set in concrete however, is how you want to provide that important education. Would you rather have your child attend a public school? Or what about a school that is privately run? Or perhaps you may even think that home schooling children is the answer you are looking for.

While many children actually enjoy all that a public school offers, such as an active environment and lots of peer pressure, other children would not benefit as much from it. And then there are the children, for reasons only known by the parents, who are put into private schools. But even then, some children do not accomplish their best in that environment either. So the alternative for educating your children, may be home schooling them. A parent always wants what is best for his child so the reasons may vary why the decision is made to home school. Along with great benefits, are also a few disadvantages.

Home Schooling Children Can Put An End To Bullying And Teasing

Some parents will home school their child because of an overly amount of bullying and teasing by other children. Regardless of what some kids do, they will forever be the object of hateful and harsh bullies. If your child is being pushed around, there are ways in which you may offer help. First, contact the teacher. If the bullying continues, go the principal. If none of this helps, you may want to consider home schooling your child. The benefit of it will help protect your child and he will no longer be subject to cruel bullies. When your child attends high school, the bullying, more than likely, will be a thing of the past. If you can teach your child at home throughout grade school, while still allowing him to encounter social situations and friendships, your child will be free from the bothersome hooligans that now pester him at school.

Home Schooling Children And Teaching The Correct Religious Beliefs

Spiritual doctrine and a Christian’s beliefs are one of the main causes for such type of study in children. Numerous Christians don’t agree with the world teaching things like evolution and sex education to their children. Many Christians also do not desire to have their child endangered by the boozing, cursing, and sexuality found in worldly-minded schools. Rather, they decide to home school their children. If you go this way, you will have total control over their course of study and how it is instructed. Rather than having your child’s brain occupied with unacceptable things like the different views on sex and scientific theories being instructed as reality, you will be able to teach your child an education on your own terms.

Putting An End To Your Unhappiness With The School System

Many times a parent become displeased with their local school system. An example of this is that kindergarten used to be held half a day, but many places are now having mandatory full day kindergarten. Shouldn’t this just be an option? Also, because of standardized testing, many schools seem like all they are doing is teaching just enough so that their students can pass the test. Is this really a good learning process? Additionally, some schools send elementary school students home with hours of homework every night. Where is the family time and if the teacher has your child for eight hours a day, isn’t that enough time to instill in them, all that is really necessary to grow up to be a productive adult?

Whether you are home schooling your child yourself, or in an online school, the question will inevitably come up about their socialization. You may hear this from relatives, friends or acquaintances. You may also have these nagging doubts yourself.

Socialization is a broad term. By this, does one mean that the student will not be exposed to diverse cultures, and nationalities? The implication here is that the home schooled student may not be prepared to cope with democracy in this country.

Dr. Brian Ray of the NHERI (National Home Education Research Institute) in 2003 studied the question of civic involvement of adults who had been home schooled. He found that twice as many home schooled adults were involved in civic organizations as public schooled adults. It was also found that 76% of home schoolers voted in the last 5 years compared to 35% of those not home schooled.

It seems to me that the larger question is the type of socialization that occurs in public school vs. home school. The development of social skills is mostly dependent on with whom one spends most of his time. In public school, this time is spent with same-age peers. Those taught at home are influenced by family members, clergy, and in controlled groups by coaches, dance teachers, and scout leaders.

The problem with peer dominated socialization is that children and teens are strongly influenced to “fit in” and be accepted by the other kids. This can be a dangerous form of pressure. Your child may become defiant to adults, use drugs or alcohol, join a gang, commit acts of violence and many other dysfunctional activities. Even with solid moral values at home, the child my ignore his conscience and put himself in danger.

Public schools attempt to counter these pressures by teaching children sexual health, “stranger danger”, and “just say no to drugs”. When the role models for behavior are other peers, and pressure is THAT powerful, these lectures will fall on deaf ears.

For high school aged kids, dating becomes an area of stress in traditional schools. Who is dating the athlete or cheerleader? The popularity of a teen’s date for the dance is massively important. The social hierarchy among teens can become all encompassing. Then there is the pressure to be sexually active. This can lead to extremely mixed up values for our teens who are experiencing physical changes at the same time.

Parents should realize that a peer dominated social environment is temporary and abnormal, and will not resemble the complexity of life in our society after public school. In fact, the home schooled student with diverse activities, is living in a much more realistic social environment than the public schooled student.

There is always a case for home schooling and parents choose to home educate their children for a broad range of reasons. For every case there are voices of opposition and doubt. This article is one of a series addressing a range of the notions raised by these voices – the concern over parental resourcefulness.

In the Adelaide newspaper, The Advertiser (Australia), there was recently an article entitled ‘In a Class of Their Own’ which reported on the increase in home schooling numbers in the last year. The article also had the comment made by a teacher, with 35 years experience, who chose to remain unnamed, that it would be impossible for a parent to provide the level of education needed to properly educate a student.

She stated, “Some parents might be able to cope with the lower grades of junior primary subjects, but you would start to need a degree of specialisation to give them the best information for the variety of subjects.” Continuing she said, “In secondary school it would be impossible to be an expert at all subjects – from German to English – and I believe these parents are depriving children of essential learning experience.”

As a knowledgeable parent, I shake my head in dismay. This teacher’s viewpoint assumes that a parent, themselves, has not studied beyond their own secondary school years. It is odd that they neglect that home educating parents have a very broad range of post-secondary qualifications including agriculture and viticulture, engineering and business, medicine and law, and oddly enough – teaching at both primary and secondary levels. How is it that the skills that parents have acquired on both their academic and career paths not acknowledged by this teacher?

A second assumption by this teacher was made in a further comment in which she said, “There is also a lack of exposure to a range of teaching styles and teaching methods. They are just getting the same old boring mum.” Now as a mother who is home educating this comment, in an of itself, is downright offensive. It suggests that mothers firstly are boring as well as not being capable of utilising varied approaches when facilitating the learning of their children.

Further to this though, is an answer that can be encapsulate why home schooling is so effective – networking. There is this widely thought belief that home schooling means school at home. When this viewpoint is taken often in conjures thoughts of a mother hovering over her children’s shoulders with ruler in hand, with her offspring sitting in front of books and mother correcting every mistake as it is made. For many home educating families this could not be further from the truth! Modern home schooling families, in contrast, often report that they need to reel their children home because they are out and about so much.

This aside, the networking ability of home educators enables them to quickly and easily link them to experts in fields outside their skill sets that are both inside and outside the home schooling community. If you are wondering how this all happens then you need to start finding you local and state home schooling groups. Often these groups operate both with a physical presence as well as an online presence. Often you will be able to find both state based support groups and home education groups that are oriented to the nature of your family or learning approaches by simply doing a search on Yahoo groups.

These groups link members to books, curriculum, courses, and specialists including medical professionals, legal support and educators with specialities which are sometimes easier taught by someone else. This, of course, is in addition to organising activities for members to do together from informal walks in local national parkland through to planned learning activities across all learning domains, that are presented by home educators or professionals that they bring in to speak on the topic. Recently, a home schooling mother arranged for a member of the Department of Primary Industries and Resources to come and explain geological concepts including how to identify minerals and crystals. The educator from the department usually only presented to upper secondary students and university students and was somewhat amazed at the ability of home-based students from the age of five to fifteen also actively taking in all that he explained to them. How wrong was that teacher in her thoughts?

This, of course, coincided this week with a report coming from Flinders University’s Science 21 (also known as Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century) that examined the qualifications of science teachers in South Australian schools. The report detailed that they had found that only 84% of general science teachers for Years 8-10 students were qualified and the findings only got worse from there. In senior classes (Year 11 & 12) the results dropped off significantly. In Biology only 75% of teachers were appropriately qualified, in Chemistry only 72% held the standard of qualification expected and in Physics only 57% held the appropriate qualifications. In fact, if your child’s teacher in South Australia is aged between 30 and 34 years of age you have approximately a 1 in 5 chance that their teacher is appropriately qualified. Sadly too, geology did not rate a mention as there were only 4 responding teachers who were all qualified but that last year there were only eight geology classes held in the entire state leaving little space for broad comparison.

I find this to be an interesting contrast to the argument put forward by the 35-year experienced teacher and it makes me wonder what the qualification results would be for subjects outside of the sciences. Would we see the same trend for the state to be below the national average as well as below what many fee-paying parents expect from our education departments? It is food for thought, is it not? Perhaps, it was a good thing that this teacher remained anonymous because I, for one, would like to have been able to write a letter asking for clarifications on her thoughts especially in consideration of this recent report.

I could determine that, in many respects, this report puts more weight to the case for home schooling. Home schooling parents are resourceful enough to find those teachers who are qualified who are willing to support students in specific academic studies where parental knowledge falls short. At the same time, too, parents have the opportunity to educate their children in skills, crafts and academia that is not taught in traditional schooling models – left instead for Universities or work places. The quality of education that home schooling parents provide is not just weighted against their ability to meet curriculum outcomes (which is how applications are measured) but when it comes to preparing young adults, it is also the amazing breadth of experiences in both academic learning, social exposure, and interaction with our world that truly make home education a quality choice for many families.

Would you like to know more about accessing resources for home education? Are you interested in hearing the thoughts of others about their home education journey and how they bridge resource gaps for their children? Yes? Then visit Organic Learning [http://organiclearning.com.au] today! Organic Learning is a web site dedicated to those passionate about learning. Featuring the blogs of home educators from around the globe, articles, videos, and links to plenty of online resources – organic learning is there to provide information and resources to both the home school curious and those in the midst of their journey as a home educator.